{"id":884,"date":"2007-06-02T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-02T15:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=884"},"modified":"2007-06-02T15:10:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-02T15:10:00","slug":"pans-labyrinth-more-gnostic-than-pagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=884","title":{"rendered":"Pan’s Labyrinth –More Gnostic than Pagan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pagan blogger Jason Pitzl-Waters has written a great deal<\/a> about the film Pan’s Labyrinth<\/em> (El laberinto del fauno)<\/a>, praising it in words such as these:<\/p>\n

I believe “Pan’s Labyrinth” presents a unique opportunity to discuss Pagan\/polytheist theology in contrast to the dominant monotheisms. Unlike “The Da Vinci Code”, this film isn’t bogged down with questions about Christian heresy and Gnosticism and can be referenced without having to talk about our views on Mary Magdalen’s marital status. If this film continues to seep into public conversations about faith and religion, Pagan commentators should be ready to move beyond disclaimers regarding Ofelia’s actions and instead talk about what elements in the film accurately portray Pagan ideas and beliefs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Living 25 miles from the nearest movie house, M. and I are big Netflix customers, and last night we finally saw the film now that it is out on DVD.<\/p>\n

Neither of us would have called it a “Pagan” movie, faun or no faun. (I will skip the “faun movie” puns.)<\/p>\n

To me it was far more Gnostic<\/a>, although perhaps not so thoroughly Gnostic as The Matrix<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

That Ofelia is a “lost princess” seems like yet another telling of the wanderings of Sophia (Wisdom)<\/a> in the fallen world. Many people respond to that story of separation: “I am not from here. My parents are not my real parents. I belong in a better, purer place.” So Gnostic.<\/p>\n

The “lost princess” is an archetypal story. It is why so many wanted to believe<\/a> that young Grand Duchess Anastasia<\/a> survived the murder of the Russian royal family in 1918 to wander lost and unrecognized for years. The story pulls us. As the Wikipedia article<\/a> points out, Sophia is the original “damsel in distress.”<\/p>\n

Gnosticism and Paganism have their points of contact, but they differ in their views of divinity and the material world. In Pan’s Labyrinth<\/em>, the material world is clearly one to be escaped from (and with good reason) and the “real world” is somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pagan blogger Jason Pitzl-Waters has written a great deal about the film Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno), praising it in words such as these: I believe “Pan’s Labyrinth” presents a unique opportunity to discuss Pagan\/polytheist theology in contrast to the dominant monotheisms. Unlike “The Da Vinci Code”, this film isn’t bogged down with questions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[36,5],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-movies","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-eg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13163,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13163","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":0},"title":"Peg Aloi Wraps Up Witchy, Pagan and Occult-themed Films & TV","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 18, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan film critic\/professor Peg Aloi looks at 2022's offerings and concludes,\"This year was a veritable sparkly cornucopia of weird, witchy, wonderful films and TV steeped in occult and pagan imagery and storylines.\" This was number one: You Won\u2019t Be Alone (2022 Sometimes States prescription to Table to explore incentive of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"film\"","block_context":{"text":"film","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=film"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/You-Wont-Be-Alone-1024x683.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/You-Wont-Be-Alone-1024x683.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/You-Wont-Be-Alone-1024x683.webp?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2324,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2324","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":1},"title":"Quick Review: ‘Pagan Metal’","author":"Chas S. 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Clifton","date":"July 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This promotional film has me thinking of the special \"Paganism, Art, and Fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate, guest-edited by Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne, and coming very soon Or at least it is the very object correlative of \"Pagan-ish,\" which is how I will label it.","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":664,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=664","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":3},"title":"A Pagan's perspective on The\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A Pagan's perspective on The Da Vinci CodeThe most interesting thing about this article in an Australian newspaper is that a Pagan was asked to join the \"panel of religious experts.\"The most serious problem according to the panel - a theologian, Catholic film critic, Opus Dei priest and a pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=247","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":4},"title":"Another Pagan Classic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been re-reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History, the leading entry in the literary genre of \"when Classics majors go bad.\" It was first published in 1992, and I did my part for her royalty payments by sending at least three hardcover copies as Christmas presents in 1993. Sales\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":251,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=251","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":5},"title":"Almost pagan Thanks to Nick\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Almost pagan Thanks to Nick Freeman, whose paper, \"The Shrineless God: Paganism, Literature, and Art in Forties England,\" will appear in the next issue of The Pomegranate, I have been watching and reading some classics of literary, if not self-consciously religious, small-p paganism. One was the film A Canterbury Tale,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}